HomeMy Public PortalAboutMainSt_1993 2005Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.4/11
FORM B BUILDING
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION
MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD
BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Photograph
View from east.
Locus Map (north at top)
Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer.
Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson
Organization: Brewster Historical Commission
Date (month / year): May 2019
Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number
67-2-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.23,
BRE.374
NRHD (02/23/1996); LHD (05/01/1973)
Town/City: Brewster
Place:(neighborhood or village):
Brewster Village
Address:1993-2005 Main Street
Historic Name: Joseph Nickerson House
Consodine House and Livery Stable
Uses:Present: hotel
Original: single-family residence
Date of Construction: ca. 1830 - 1916
Source:deeds, historic atlases
Style/Form: Second Empire
Architect/Builder: unknown
Exterior Material:
Foundation: brick, stone
Wall/Trim: wood clapboard/wood
Roof:wood & asphalt shingles
Outbuildings/Secondary Structures:
livery stable, 1864 (BRE.374)
Major Alterations (with dates):
wings added on rear, late 20th century
Condition:good
Moved: no yes Date:
Acreage:4.50
Setting: The building is in the midst of Brewster Village,
which is largely residential but with religious, civic, and
commercial properties mixed in and ranging in date from the
early 19th century to the mid-20th century.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 1
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places.
If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form.
ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION:
The Consodine House, constructed in a number of stages from as early as ca. 1830 to at least 1916 when the addition of new
dining rooms was reported, is a story-and-a-half wood frame building with a mansard roof forming a second floor. The Second
Empire-style design of the building was established in ca. 1874 by Joseph Nickerson after he purchased the property and a pre-
existing dwelling documented as far back as the 1830s. A more intensive inspection is necessary to fully understand the
evolution of the building and locate evidence of an earlier dwelling.
The hotel has a five-bay front façade with a center entrance in a restrained trabeated architrave tucked under a full porch with
column posts reputedly added in 1911. A large central gambrel-roof dormer, perhaps a later addition, projects out over the porch
from the mansard and obscures a portion of its flared eaves and cornice, distinguished by a patterned overlay along the frieze.
The roof contains a number of dormers with arched pediments on all sides of the building. A mansard wing of similar design and
finishes extends from the rear, the easterly half of which was built with the house and the westerly half, projecting past the end
wall of the main block, was added in the hotel phase during the early 1900s. The easterly side, recessed behind the end wall of
the main block, is fronted by a porch; historic maps indicate that the two porches were connected by a section wrapping around
the easterly end to create a meandering veranda. A gambrel-roof ell connects to the back end of the rear wing and contains a
vehicle bay with a hanging track door. This was likely added in 1900 to connect to a livery stable, now gone. As the hotel’s
restaurant expanded later in the 20th century, a wing was added at the very rear to contain a modern commercial kitchen.
Historic maps suggest that the outbuilding associated with the property originated as the flour and grain store and upper-story
public hall built by Samuel T. Howes when he owned the property in the 1860s. The 1880 map identifies it as stables with a
lodge room above. The exterior appearance of the building is consistent with this history. Today, the ground level of the two-
story wood frame building with gable roof and wood shingle siding contains two storefronts; four windows are spaced across the
upper story. The rear of the building has been renovated apparently for a dwelling created there.
Both buildings are sited close to the highway, with the hotel buffered on the front and westerly side by lawns and the barn set
back behind a parking lot. A driveway runs between the buildings to a large parking area behind the hotel bordered on both
sides by mature trees. A wetland is located at the extreme northerly end of the parcel.
HISTORICAL NARRATIVE:
What is in 2019 the Brewster Inn and Chowder House probably replaced an older dwelling on the property dating to at least
1830. The first house here may have been part of the homestead of master mariner Benjamin Mayo (1791-1838), who married
Hannah Gray (1792-1873) of Brewster in 1817 and had one son, Asa (1817-52). Benjamin Mayo is listed in the 1830 Brewster
census, but he died in Martinique in 1838. The year before he sold to his older brother Jeremiah Mayo (1786-1867) twelve acres
with a house, barn, and outbuildings on it extending from Main Street to Cape Cod Bay; the tract was bordered on the west by
the First Parish Church cemetery and what is now Breakwater Road and on the east by the land of Elisha Crocker and Benjamin
Crocker.1 Less than two years later Jeremiah Crocker sold the same parcel and its buildings to Asa Mayo, Benjamin’s only
child.2 He married Martha Foster (1817-99) in 1841 and died 11 years later. His 6 April 1852 will left $800 in the hands of
trustees Elisha Bangs, George W. Higgins, and Tully Crosby, who were to pay the interest on the invested sum twice a year to
Asa’s mother Hannah Gray Mayo on the condition that she “discharge the mortgage & give up the mortgage note to said
Trustees without any pay from them the said mortgage was made April 1, 1851 & the said note was of the same date on my
estate in Brewster, the said estate is now held by Francis Baker by a bond given him by me April 1, 1852.” The will stipulated
who would receive the trust income after Hannah Mayo died that Mayo’s wife Martha was to receive the rest of his estate.
Whether Martha Mayo was able to redeem the mortgage is not clear, but by 1855 she was living in Tully Crosby’s household
1 Benjamin Mayo to Jeremiah Mayo, 14 July 1837, BCD 8:180.
2 Jeremiah Mayo to Asa Mayo, 15 April 1839, BCD 22:142.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 2
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
and in February 1861 the trustees named in Asa Mayo’s will sold the parcel to Francis Baker for $1650, who the next day sold it
to Samuel T. Howes of Dennis for $2100.3
Francis Baker (1824-78) was born in Yarmouth and was a butcher with $790 in real property in Brewster in 1850, but 1855 he is
clearly shown at this location with his wife, Mary Myrick Baker, and their five children. He was then farming, as he was in 1860,
when two more children had been added to the family. Samuel T. Howes, to whom Baker sold the property the next year, was
born in 1824 and was living in the house by 1865 with his wife Sophronia D. Foster of Brewster, whom he married in 1849, and a
boarding laborer. Howes was living in Brewster by 1863 when he registered for the draft and gave his occupation as stable
keeper, and by May 1864 he had had a two-story building constructed to house a flour and grain store on the first floor and a hall
on the second.4 The 1870 census indicates that Howes was running a “country store,” and he and his wife were the sole
occupants of the house; he served as a Brewster selectman in the same year.
Samuel T. Howes died in September 1874, and his wife died in December 1875 in Chatham. In April 1878 Howe’s siblings sold
the property to Joseph Nickerson (1804-80) for $2300.5 Nickerson was the son of David and Priscilla Snow Nickerson and a
Brewster native. He had been master of vessels in the foreign trade until 1845, when he began the ship chandlery Joseph
Nickerson and Company in Boston, which manufactured cordage and cotton duck, imported hemp and rope from all over the
world, and dealt in anchors, chains, oakum, and ship stores. He was a founder and later president of the Arlington Woolen Mills,
a ship owner, an early investor in the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, and the principal benefactor of what became
the Nickerson Home for Children in Boston.6
The Barnstable Patriot noted in May 1875 that Nickerson “has signified his intention of becoming a permanent resident” of
Brewster, and he was by then already well regarded in his native town: in 1867 he gave $1,000 toward the construction of the
Brewster Ladies’ Library, and in 1873 he paid for enclosing the town’s old cemetery.7 But he was not long a resident: he died in
1880. One obituary described him as “one of Boston’s leading merchants,” another as “one of the wealthiest citizens of Boston.
His estate was appraised at more than $4.5 million, and his will left among numerous other bequests $3,000 in trust to the
Brewster Ladies’ Library, $6,000 in trust to support Unitarian preaching in town, and $23,000 in trust for Brewster’s “deserving
poor.”8
In 1885 the trustees of Nickerson’s will sold the 14-acre parcel and its buildings at 1993-2005 Main Street to blacksmith Zoeth
Snow, who lived at 2022 Main Street (BRE.270).9 Snow sold 8 acres and the buildings in May 1891 to physician and pharmacist
Frank A. Rogers, who owned it for just four years before selling it in 1895 to Thomas P. Consodine.10 The property remained in
the Consodine family until 1951.
3 Elisha Bangs, Tully Crosby, and George W. Higgins, trustees estate of Asa Mayo, to Francis Baker, 11 February 1861, BCD 76:307; Francis
and Mary C. Baker to Samuel T. Howes, Dennis, 12 February 1861, BCD 76:308. The trustees sold 20 acres with the house, barn, and
outbuildings to Baker, who sold 14 acres with the buildings to Howes.
4 “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 13 May 1864, 2.
5 James S. Howes, Polly Howes (wife of Winslow), Lothrop Howes, and Elijah S. Howes, all Dennis; Freeman Howes, Yarmouth, to Joseph
Nickerson, 20 April 1878, BCD 133:123.
6 “Obituary: Joseph Nickerson,” Boston Post, 2 March 1880, 3; “Death of Joseph Nickerson,” Boston Globe, 1 March 1880; undated clipping
from unidentified newspaper.
7 Barnstable Patriot, 25 June 1867, 2, “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 26 June 1868, 2, and 8 March 1873, 2. The last article stated that voters
at the March 1873 town meeting passed a resolution “in regard to the thoughtfulness and liberality of Joseph Nickerson, Esq., of Boston, by
permanently and handsomely enclosing the town’s ancient burying-ground.” About the time that he moved to Brewster Nickerson filed suit
against the city of Boston to recover poll and personal tax amounting to $6400 on the grounds that he was legally a resident of Brewster; the
jury ruled in his favor. See “Tax Litigation,” Boston Globe, 27 October 1879, 4.
8 “Bequests of the Late Joseph Nickerson,” Barnstable Patriot, 9 March 1880, 2; Boston Post, 9 July 1880, 3.
9 Oddly, “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 16 April 1878, 2, notes that blacksmith Zoeth Snow had bought “the house and lands of the late
Samuel T Howes,” by which acquisition he “will gain a new and convenient house by this movement, but will lose the elevated and attractive
sight on which the house of his ancestors has long stood. Antiquarians would fall in love with the ancient mansion, but if they aimed for comfort
might dream of moving the Howes building over upon the lot where the old one stands, so as not to lose all associations with the past.—May
the Snows find their new home a satisfactory one.” The article stated that Snow would soon take possession, but four days later the property
was sold to Joseph Nickerson, who must have made the Howes heirs a more attractive offer and thus postponed Snow’s eventual purchase.
10 Albert W. Nickerson, Marion; George A. Nickerson, Dedham; Emma L. Hartt, Brookline, trustees will Joseph Nickerson, to Zoeth Snow, 4
February 1885, BCD 167:345; Zoeth Snow to Frank A. Rogers, 5 May 1891, BCD 196:479; Frank A. Rogers to Thomas P. Consodine, 6 June
1895, BCD 216:475.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 3
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
Born in Brewster in 1868, Thomas Patrick Consodine was the second and five children of Irish immigrants John Consodine
(1841-9128) and Bridget Kearns Consodine (1839-1918). When he was 22 years old, he bought the blacksmith shop long
owned and operated by Zoeth Snow (2026 Main Street, BRE.375) and described himself as a wheelwright when he married
Clara F. Rogers of Dennis in 1895. He was clearly living in the house at 1993-2005 Main Street in 1900 with his wife, his brother
John Anthony Consodine (1866-1936), and domestic servant Susie L. Howes. The Barnstable Patriot noted in April 1900 that
Consodine was “building a new stable.”11
Whether the Consodines planned from the start to convert the house into a hotel is unclear, but by 1903 people were boarding
there; Mary F. Knowles closed her house and spent at least some of her winters there beginning in 1903 and through at least
1937. In May 1908 the Hyannis Patriot reported that Thomas Consodine “has been making a good many improvements lately” at
his house, and by May 1909 the Consodines were advertising the property as the Consodine House in the Boston Herald. They
described the hotel as “situated on the north shore of Cape Cod, on the main macadam road from Buzzard’s bay to
Provincetown; best of boating and fishing; interior drives and auto roads unexcelled; afternoon teas between 3 and 5 o’clock.”12
In September 1909 the Consodine House was declared “the only house open the year round in the heart of Cape Cod’s gunning
and fishing preserves. Dogs and guides furnished for all kinds of sports.”13
The 1910 census lists Thomas P. Consodine as a blacksmith with his own shop and his wife Clara as a boardinghouse keeper.
Also in the household was John Consodine, by then also an express agent, Mary F. Knowles, and a domestic servant from
Canada. By 1913 Frederick Young Jr. was working as a chauffeur for the Consodine House, which was described as “filled to
overflowing” in April 1914. Consodine had W. W. Knowles and Son install a gas lighting plant in the hotel in 1911 and George
Foster add a bathroom in the “main building,” rebuild the porch, and add “new columns.” The Consodines grew all the
vegetables and produced all the milk used in the hotel, and Clara Consodine ran the hotel kitchen. Local accounts state that the
stable housed up to 13 horses, some of which John Consodine used to drive the school barge; he also gave horse and carriage
tours to summer guests and took passengers to and from the hotel and the rail depot.14
By 1915 the fact that Consodine House was so often full that it had to turn away business compelled Consodine to build an
addition in 1915. “The influx of guests last season broke all records, the Yarmouth Register reported, “and on several occasions
outside rooms had to be engaged for the patrons.” In 1916 new dining rooms were finished “just in time for the early rush of auto
parties” on Patriot’s Day in April.15 Through these years the hotel was consistently in search of workers—in the kitchen, waiting
table, and cleaning rooms. For some reason the Consodines almost always advertised for “colored” help in the Boston
newspapers and sometimes even specified the need for a “neat, capable Southern colored girl” or a “colored West Indian girl”
from 1916 to 1918.16
In February 1918 a garage on the Consodine House property, described as being made of steel and concrete and “as part of the
hotel equipment,” was burned down in a fire that also destroyed eight cars, most of them owned by Thomas and John
Consodine, and the barn on the Mary E. Crocker property next door. In May the brothers had the Yarmouth firm of Lewis
Eldridge and Son move the “big stables” that had been attached to the Consodine House and convert them into an auto storage
garage.17
The 1920 census, recorded in January, listed Thomas P. Consodine as a farmer, his wife Clara as hotel manager, and brother
John as an express agent. Also in the household were hotel cashier Susie W. Cutting, and two boarders from New York, William
and Mary E. Suydam. In November that year Thomas Consodine died in a Cambridge hospital at the age of 52.18 His will left to
11 “Brewster,” Barnstable Patriot, 16 April 1900, 3.
12 Boston Herald, 9 May 1909. This advertisement ran weekly from 9 May to 1 August 1909.
13 Boston Herald, 5 and 19 September 1909.
14 See Massachusetts Historical Commission Form B BRE.23, Teresa C. Ellis, 23 April 1980; Brewster Historical Society, Images of America:
Brewster (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002), 68-69; and George H. Boyd III, Brewster: The Way We Were (West Barnstable, MA: by
the author, 2016), 18-19.
15 See “Twenty-Five Years Ago (December 16, 1911),” Yarmouth Register, 11 December 1936, 5; 10 May 1913, 1; “25 April, 12 December,
and 21 December 1914; “Twenty-Five Years Ago (December 25, 1915),” ibid., 20 December 1940, 6, “Twenty-Five Years Ago (April 29,
1916),” ibid., 25 April 1941, 6.
16 See Boston Globe, 12 November and 17 December 1916; 10 June, 12 August, 9 September, 4 November and 23 November 1917; 14
February 1918. After December 1919 ads for help no long appeared in Boston newspapers.
17 “Brewster: Consodine Garage Destroyed,” Hyannis Patriot, 4 February 1918, 4, and “Brewster,” ibid., 20 May 1918, 4.
18 “Brewster Man Dead,” Barnstable Patriot, 22 November 1920, 2; Yarmouth Register, 4 December 1920, 4.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 4
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
his brother John all property they owned in common and the rest of his estate to his widow Clara, who continued the hotel
business. The hotel continued to remain open all year, and Clara Consodine still catered to the motoring crowd by advertising
“special Sunday dinners.” But Consodine House also was the site of numerous meetings and events—family reunions, company
banquets, reunions, and meetings of local, county, and state organizations.
In 1930 Clara Consodine lived at Consodine House with her brother-in-law John, hotel secretary Sue Cutting, two waitresses, a
dishwasher, and a cook. In directories of Cape hostelries in Boston papers, the Consodine House was usually the only one listed
in Brewster. In one 1931 advertisement Clara Consodine promoted the hotel’s “homelike atmosphere”; in another in 1935 she
declared it “a modern, clean, quite and refined hotel,” stressed that it had been under the same management for 40 years, and
urged travelers to “come for a real rest or a bit to eat.”19 By the mid-1930s rooms could be hired for $5 a day.
John Anthony Consodine died in October 1936, and in October 1937 Clara Consodine closed the hotel for the winter and lived in
Boston; she returned to open the hotel for the season in mid-March 1938. By 1940 seven people were listed as resident in the
house—Clara Consodine, her “kitchen man” William McConnell, waitress Arlene Lathan, chambermaid Elva Healy, and three
guests, one of them a grocery salesman. In 1941, when fire destroyed Sea Pines School, the Consodine House provided rooms
for the 25 students and faculty.
Clara Consodine continued to advertise Consodine House in the Boston newspapers at least through the summer of 1950, and
in December 1951 she sold it to Blanche Cole of New York City, who was expected to continue the hotel; by early January 1952
Cole had moved to Brewster and Clara Considine had moved to “one of the Jorgensen apartments.”20 In late May that year she
died. Her Yarmouth Register obituary recounted her years in Brewster:
Mrs. Consodine created the hotel when she settled in Brewster as the bride of the late Thomas P. Consodine, the
town’s blacksmith and wheelwright.
When she sold the hotel, large barn which had once housed a livery stable, and 6 ½ acres of land, Mrs.
Consodine said some of her guests had been coming regularly to the hotel for nearly half a century. The hotel
was known principally as a resort hotel although it was open the year around.
In the early years of the hotel a large garden provided vegetables for the table and a herd of cows
supplied milk not only for the guests but for neighboring families. The hotel was started before the State highway
was put through and before the appearance of automobiles. At that time John Consodine, Mrs. Consodine’s
brother-in-law, operated a thriving livery stable in the nearby barn.
Many famous persons including the late Joseph C. Lincoln, Brewster’s best known author, have been
guests of long standing at the Consodine Hosue. For 30 years Mrs. Consodine did all the cooking at the hotel
which had a wide reputation for its delicious, home cooked food.
Hotelmen say that Mrs. Consodine, before her retirement, had operated a hotel longer than any other
person in New England and after her 42nd year in business Cape Cod hotelmen presented an attractive clock to
her.
Mrs. Consodine was born in East Brewster, the daughter of Samuel F. and Emma Rogers. When she was
a girl her family moved to Dennisport but she returned to the town of her birth after her marriage to a Brewster
man.21
Blanche Cole owned Consodine House for only two years and sold it in late December 1953 to Frances L. Wilson, who owned
and operated it until 1969, when she sold it to Peter B. Murphy of Worcester and William A. Carter of Amesbury. They changed
the name of the hotel to the Brewster Inn and Chowder House about that time and transferred title to the property to the
corporation in 1973. The corporation deeded the property back to Peter Murphy alone in 1993, and he was owner of record in
2019.22
19 Springfield Republican, 14 June 1931, 28 May and 11 June 1933; Boston Herald, 30 June 1936.
20 Clara F. Consodine to Blanche Cole, New York NY, 30 November 1951, BCD 800:468; Boston Globe, 26 September 1948, 21 April 1950; “A
Miscellany,” Barnstable Patriot, 13 December 1951, 2; M. Pearl Dickey, “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 4 January 1952.
21 “Clara Consodine Dies; Sold Inn Last Winter,” Yarmouth Register, 23 May 1952, 3, from The Cape Codder.
22 Blanche Cole to Frances L. Wilson, Queens Village NY, 29 December 1953, BCD 864:103; Frances Leavis (fka Frances L. Wilson) to Peter
B. Murphy, Worcester, and William A. Carter, Amesbury, 10 April 1969, BCD 1436:290; Peter B. Murphy and William A. Carter to Brewster Inn,
Inc., 26 June 1973, BCD 1887:335; Peter B. Murphy, president and treasurer Brewster Inn Inc., to Peter B. Murphy, 1 October 1993, BCD
8871:255.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 5
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES
American Ancestors.org. Massachusetts vital, tax, and probate records.
Ancestry.com. Federal and state censuses, vital records, historic maps, and “Valuation List of the Town of Brewster 1890.”
Barnstable Patriot Digital Newspaper Archive. Sturgis Library website,
http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/Sturgis/default.aspx#panel=home.
Brewster Assessors’ Records, Brewster Town Clerk Archives and 1926 Town Report.
Deyo, Simeon L. History of Barnstable County, Mass. New York: H. W. Blake Co., 1890.
Freeman, Frederick. The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County. Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1858-62.
Otis, Amos. Genealogical Notes on Barnstable Families. 2 vols. Barnstable, MA: Patriot Press, 1888.
Sears, Henry J. Brewster Ship Masters. Yarmouthport, MA: C. W. Swift, 1906.
Simpkins, John. “Topographical Description of Brewster.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 10 (1809): 72-79.
MAPS
Walling. Henry Francis. Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes & Nantucket, Massachusetts. Boston: 1858.
Atlas of Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1880.
Atlas of Barnstable County Massachusetts. Boston: Walker Lithograph & Publishing Co., 1910.
PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019)
View from west.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 6
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
View from NW.
View from NE.
INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 1993-2005 MAIN STREET
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No.
220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125
Continuation sheet 7
B, G, I BRE.23
BRE.374
View from SW.
View from NW.